Two Halves
by iluvdimples314
Summary: Another angsty hurt/comfort, set after Neil's death, but before Cameron finks. Choxy slash if you still haven't taken your goggles off. "In moments like this one, he and Knox complete each other in such an effortless, unintentional way." Reviews are love.


Knox Overstreet struts down the empty corridor, humming under his breath. He stops mid-stride when he spots the sliver of light pouring from Charlie's room and knocks sharply on the door. "Hey, Dalton! You coming to study group tonight?"

The first thing he hears is the shattering of glass against the floor. The second is a loud cry.

Without hesitating, Knox yanks the doorknob and barges in. What he sees next takes the breath from his chest.

Charlie Dalton is splayed on the floor in his boxer shorts, moaning softly. His hands are clenched in white-knuckled fists. All around him are sparkling shards of glass, which Knox assumes previously made up a bottle of liquor, given the unmistakable stench of alcohol that pollutes the entire room.

Knox inhales sharply. "Charlie?" He crouches down beside his friend on the balls of his feet, reaching out to grab his shoulder. "Charlie, are you okay?"

Charlie opens his eyes and turns his head to look up at Knox. "Stupid question," he mutters.

For a moment, Knox freezes. He can see the tiny slivers entrenched in Charlie's skin, the rivulets of blood dripping onto the floor. It looks like the bottle slipped from his hand and shattered, and then Charlie fell on top of it. The unforgiving hardwood floor has pressed shards into the tender, freckled expanse of Charlie's back. Closer inspection reveals identical wounds to his calves and the back of his thighs.

A groan from Charlie awakes Knox from his trance, and he gets to his feet. "C'mon, Dalton. Get up."

"No, thank you," Charlie tells him, then curls into himself. The glass digs deeper into every inch of exposed flesh, and another pitiful whimper escapes him. "Shit."

Knox grabs Charlie under his arms and yanks him into a sitting position. "A little help?" he requests, but there's no response, verbal or otherwise. He drags Charlie across the floor, wincing at the scraping sound of the glass, then hoists him up onto the bed.

Charlie sags onto the pillows. "Didn't know you had that in you, Knoxious." His jab is punctuated by a loud hiccup, followed by a giggle.

"You are so plastered," Knox chuckles, then kneels down in front of Charlie. "Now roll over."

"No need to be snappy," Charlie murmurs, but he obeys nonetheless.

Gasping audibly, Knox examines the damage closely. From his neck to his ankles, Charlie is glittering with glass and fat droplets of blood. His ivory skin shines with sweat and liquor. If there's one bright point, his boxers seem to have protected his posterior from harm. Nonetheless, Knox gulps. "This is gonna suck, Dalton," Knox warns him before reaching for the largest slice.

"What's going to-" Charlie begins to inquire, but his question is interrupted by a grunt.

Knox turns over the extracted shard in his fingers before tossing it to the floor. "Sorry," he mutters. "You have glass stuck all over you." He pulls out another one, as if he needed to prove that he was telling the truth.

Charlie squirms and sniffs, then lets out a belch. "Thought you weren't s'posed to feel it 'till the morning," he drawls.

Chuckling softly, Knox redirects himself to the task at hand. It literally makes his chest ache to hurt Charlie like this, but he knows that it's necessary. "I'll just do this as fast as possible, I guess." He ignores the impulse to stroke Charlie's hair. "Like a really big band-aid."

Charlie giggles drunkenly. "I'm a masculine manly macho man!" he exclaims. "I'm Charlie the Gnarly! No glass bottle shall best me!" He thrusts his fist above his head, and the tiny bits of glass snag on the sheet, causing him to hiss in surprised agony.

Knox was ready to burst out laughing at Charlie's self-declared nickname, but as he watches Charlie's face crumple, watches his blood dot the bed sheets, all he wants to do is cry. "You've gotta hold still, Dalton," he pleads, guiding Charlie's arm gingerly back onto the mattress.

"'Kay," Charlie whimpers. Before Neil's death, even if he weren't completely sober, he would never have allowed anyone to see him like this. Not Charlie "Bulletproof" Dalton. But right now, Charlie's so drenched in alcohol and grief and pain, he couldn't even recall his _real_ middle name.

Knox takes a deep breath and begins plucking, dropping the debris into an unsightly pile on the floor beside him. "You got yourself in deep this time," he warns, swallowing hard. "If Hagar comes in here, we are…" Knox has never been one to curse, but he can't think of any other appropriate adjective. "We're fucked."

From recent experience, Charlie knows that muscle movement isn't the wisest of actions, so he grunts in reluctant agreement. He can no longer make out Knox's facial features in detail, as his eyes are clouded with tears that he refuses to allow to fall. "We're fucked anyways." And he means it in the most morose sense of the word. Charlie knows as well as anyone that the Dead Poets' lives are never going to be the same. Not after they've lost the force that holds them together, their mutual source of inspiration. Not after they've lost Neil.

Pausing in his work, Knox swipes at his own eyes. "It doesn't have to be like this, Charlie." Where this optimism is coming from, he doesn't know, because he's just as desolate as Charlie; he just didn't think of drowning his pain in liquor.

"What the hell are you suggesting?" Charlie growls, all of his previous drunken slur gone from his words. "That we replace him?"

At this, it takes all that Knox has to prevent himself from dissolving to a puddle of tears on the floor. "No." He takes a shaky breath. "Never."

Charlie's stony features soften, but only slightly. "Then what are you suggesting, Knox." He doesn't have the strength to raise his voice at the end of his sentence, so it ends up sounding like a statement rather than the question he intended. In fact, he's desperate to hear Knox's response. He'd love for someone to tell him how to get through this. Or at least to deal with it until he can get the girls from Henley Hall to smuggle him some more vodka.

Knox sighs, slowly tugging a particularly jagged shard from the small of Charlie's back. "Well, for one, you could refrain from alcohol poisoning. _That _isn't going to improve the circumstances."

Snorting loudly, Charlie watches the moisture in his eyes wobble dangerously. "I'm so glad you can be so clinical about this. If ignorance is bliss, then complete nonchalance must be pretty fucking nice." He wishes he could move, wishes he could escape this haunted place and run as far as his legs could carry him until he could simply collapse into the snow, curl into a ball and die. As much as it startles him to even think of, death would be a welcome relief.

Knox clamps his lower lip firmly between his front teeth, scooting to pick the glass from the backs of Charlie's legs. "You think I'm being nonchalant?" It seems strange to argue using such sophisticated vocabulary, like a political debate. Still, he persists. "Maybe _you _can grieve by drinking yourself to oblivion, Charlie, but _I _don't have the resources." He plucks the shards from his flesh with increasing speed and vigor. "I have no idea how to deal with this," he bites out. "But until I figure out a better way, all I can think to do is…" He trails off, unsure how to summarize his reserve, stoniness, and apparent lack of emotion in one word. In the end, he settles for, "…this."

Luckily for the less verbose of the two, Charlie understands. He lifts an arm to rub the back of his neck, clenching his jaw as two determined tears trace matching trails down his cheeks. "Sorry," he murmurs.

Dropping the last bit of glass to the floor, Knox nods wordlessly.

With moderate difficulty, Charlie contorts his body to peer at himself. "It's all out?" He uses one hand to prop up his face and the other to wipe the moisture from his face.

"Yup," Knox reports, rather hoarsely. He clears his throat. "Yeah, lemme get, um, a cloth or something." In his typical bumbling fashion, Knox digs through the pile of laundry at the foot of Charlie's bed, searching for something resembling a washcloth. In the end, he's able to unearth the ratty remains of a Welton tee-shirt, and he figures that it'll do.

"Very hygienic. They don't call you Knoxious for nothing," Charlie jests half-heartedly. He offers a half-formed smile, and receives one in return.

The poet in Charlie wants to record the figurative significance in this exchange. In moments like this one, he and Knox complete each other in such an effortless, unintentional way.

With renewed tenderness, Knox mops at Charlie's wounds. In many places, the gashes have clotted and the bleeding has stopped. Knox examines the deeper cuts closely, instinctively applying pressure with the rag. "Feel any better?" he inquires softly.

Charlie works his jaw for a moment. "Not sure." He winces as Knox removes the rag from his shoulder blade, taking a bit of raw flesh along with it and leaving searing pain behind. "Stings like hell, actually." He hasn't previously believed any experience to be as painful as Nolan's primitive reprimand, but he's discovering that head-to-toe gashes combined with the antiseptic sting of alcohol rises to the challenge.

Resorting to his memories of maternal comfort, Knox purses his lips and blows gently on the patch of skin he's dabbing at.

A shiver of relief runs up Charlie's spine. He feels abrupt moisture return to his face, and everything catches up to him in this very moment. _Neil is dead. I am drunk. I am hurt. And Knox is taking care of me. Knox cares about me. _He takes a shaky breath and slowly rolls onto his back, ignoring any and all protest. "Knox, I-"

Charlie's thought is cut short by his caretaker's expression. Knox's face looks like a piece of paper that has been folded and unfolded one too many times. His lips are pressed tightly together, his jaw is clenched, and tears shine on his cheeks.

It takes Charlie a few moments to register that they're mirroring each other.

All at once, the two boys dive into one another's arms. Knox stumbles onto the bed beside Charlie and leans against the wall behind him. Charlie tucks his knees up to his chest and presses his head into the crook of Knox's neck. Their arms slide around waists and shoulders, pulling Charlie and Knox impossibly closer, entwining them so thoroughly that it's hard to say where one of them ends and the other begins.

And for the first time since they lost Neil, Charlie and Knox feel whole.


End file.
